50 Times Tourists Visited Popular Spots Only To Realize They’re Not Quite What They Imagined

Paris Syndrome is the phenomenon where you feel extremely disappointed when you visit any overhyped destination.

To put it bluntly, your expectations are so high that there is no way that you can end up content.

You end up incredibly disappointed when you see what reality—with all of its noise and messiness, grit and grime—is truly like.

Looking at photos and videos of your dream destinations on social media can be a ton of fun.

However, you shouldn’t forget that they’re heavily curated, edited, and editorialized snapshots of reality. Just like you shouldn’t make assumptions about the lives of influencers and celebrities as shared online, so too you shouldn’t mistake the glitz and glamor of tourist spots for 100% reality.

In short, what you see isn’t quite what you get. People tend to want to show the best version of themselves online.

That’s a natural instinct. We want to be liked, adored, respected, and looked up to. However, if that desire for love and admiration gets out of hand, it can lead to a person taking their online persona too far.

Those influencers might be driven to create the illusion of the perfect life they live, when they might, in fact, be nowhere near perfection.

So, they hype their activities and trips up. They present every location they visit as something that is beyond awesome. Wow! 11 out of 10! Must see!

And, sure, those tourist spots might genuinely be great. But when you hype yourself up too much, you increase the chance of disappointing yourself because you expect something even grander. All because ‘great’ isn’t ‘perfect.’

Keeping your expectations in check is one of the best pieces of travel advice that we’d give anyone. It’s good to have standards. It’s good to want to have a quality experience. But one of the main pros and cons of travel is that there’s a lot of unpredictability and nuance involved.

Things aren’t black or white. There are lots of shades of gray. Good experiences that are a bit rough and chaotic. Bad experiences that, nonetheless, are pleasurable in small ways.

It’s always advisable to keep an open mind and be flexible. And it’s healthier to keep your expectations low(er) instead of high(er). Again: wanting quality is good. Being enthusiastic about your trip is good (travel is cool!).

But hype is the careless destroyer of otherwise quality experiences. In short, you have to remember that many influencers can use timing and angles (and Photoshop!) to their advantage. They can make tourist destinations look far better than they are.

With that in mind, it’s even more important that you research the destinations you want to travel to.

The best antidote to hype is, well, the truth. Read some news articles, scroll through some photos on Google, skim some travel blogs.

Try to see what those oh-so-utterly-perfect tourist spots look like from other perspectives. That should help you set more realistic expectations.

Like it or not, people tend to compare themselves to other folks. Including people who have massive followings on social media.

However, you can seriously harm your mental health and develop self-esteem issues if you constantly compare yourself to influencers. When you constantly read between the lines that you’re ‘not good enough’ while everyone else is living such a happy, rich, whatever else life, it gnaws at you.

A good rule of thumb is to reduce the amount of time you spend on social media if you find yourself constantly exhausted, drained, and anxious after using it. It’s fine to enjoy it in small quantities.

Nobody’s telling you to be a Luddite and live like a hermit with no tech. However, it becomes an issue when your daily life suffers from internet and social media addiction.

It’s also worrying if you feel that you can’t make any serious decisions without first seeing what your favorite influencers and celebrities would advise.

Which of these social media versus reality comparisons shocked you the most? What have been the most disappointing tourist spots you’ve visited in person? On the other hand, what are some destinations that have pleasantly surprised you?

Where do you plan to travel to in the near future, dear Pandas? What do you do to avoid overhyping yourself? We’d love to hear all about your trips! Tell us all about your travels in the comments section, at the very bottom of this list.